Biography

"The best biographies leave their readers with a sense of having all but entered into a second life and of having come to know another human being in some ways better than he knew himself.”

"An affecting mosaic of oral history, poetry and memoir-concerning Cash himself, but also the era in which his music took root and thrived."Publishers Weekly". Johnny Cash was a poor sharecropper's son from Arkansas who became one of the most influential figures in American music. In the 1950s he embarked on a music career that took him to the heights of fame and wealth but also to the depths of addiction and despair.

	At the age of forty-three, with a career that spans two decades and ranges from the scandalous to the transcendent, Madonna is a bigger phenomenon than ever. But who is the private woman behind the public image? From motherless child to wife and mother, from "boy toy" to fiercely independent diva, Madonna is one of the most remarkable women of our time.

From his military career's beginnings with the Virginia Regiment, here is the exceptional decisiveness that led him to fire the opening shots in the 1754 war between England and France. . .the unshakable determination which, in the darkest winter of the American Revolution, demanded total victory and yielded to nothing less.Rich anecdotes and fascinating historical documents clearly reveal Washington's critical role in the birth of a democratic nation. Here is a definitive portrait of George Washington, the man who unified a new country.

"Before Elvis there was nothing."John Lennon " "It was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow we all dreamed it."Bruce Springsteen. "It was that voice, those eyes, that hair, the cars, the girls". Elvis Presley revolutionized American pop culture when, at age twenty-one, he became a modern superstar. A Memphis Beau Brummel even before he found fame, Elvis had a personal style that, like his music, had an immediate impact on his audience that continues to influence us today."Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century," Leornard Bernstein.

	The life of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and black civil rights leader burns as brightly today as it did 30 years ago with events and festivals, parades and community service projects that take place each year on MLK Day.. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

	The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin offers Franklin’s life story—at least the first few decades, as he died without finishing it—as he tries to identify and develop a formula for personal success. Included is the popular ‘Art of Virtue,’ in which Franklin lists the 13 qualities he hoped to possess.

"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." Bob Dylan's Chronicle: Volume One explores the critical junctions in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships.

A Private Man. Read by President Bush - George Bush openly shares his private thoughts. Organized chronologically, the volume begins with eighteen-year-old George's letters to his parents during World War II, he was the youngest pilot in the Navy. Listeners will gain insights into Bush's career highlights - the oil business, his two terms in Congress, his ambassadorship to the U. N., his service as an envoy in China, his tenure with the Central Intelligence Agency, and of course, the vice presidency, the presidency, and the post-presidency.

Isaac Newton's world had operated in a fixed, rigid, "absolute" framework of space and time. Yet discoveries about electromagnetism in the late nineteenth century created new and troubling inconsistencies. In 1905, Einstein's name became synonymous with "genius" when his Special Theory of Relativity challenged old concepts in physics. Hertz, Lorentz, Mach, Poincare, and others illustrated the ideas that so captivated Albert Einstein and shook our conventional ideas about space and time.

	This extraordinary biography by one of the most highly regarded historians on the subject examines Lincoln both as a rising politician and as president. As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of United States presidents.